Those unions which are now monitoring the causes of ill-health amongst their members are to be commended

Tony Burke, the president of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, which involves Unite, GMB, Community and Prospect, reports that welding fumes are shown to cause cancers — and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU), along with the Alex Ferry Foundation, a charity linked to the CSEU, has launched the Breathe Safe campaign to raise awareness.

CSEU general secretary Ian Waddell said: “We believe that the numbers of welders diagnosed with these conditions is the tip of the iceberg. We want welders, retired workers and also their families to understand what the symptoms look like so they can take immediate action.”

Four years ago, the Health and Safety Executive issued a safety alert about the link between mild steel welding fume and cancer: “Many studies report increased risk of lung cancer in welders or other workers exposed to welding fumes. The International Association for Research on Cancer concludes that all welding fume can cause lung cancer and may cause kidney cancer, classifying all welding fume as Group 1 carcinogenic substances.”

A welder at work in Bosch Thermotechnology in Chesterfield

The Breathe Safe campaign — funded by the CSEU and the Alex Ferry Foundation, named after a former CSEU general secretary — is working with the all-party parliamentary group on respiratory disease.

It recommends anyone exposed to welding fume in transport repair, construction and machinery manufacturing see their doctor for regular check-ups and employers to offer annual health checks and provide proper ventilation equipment.

Those unions which now monitor the causes of ill-health amongst their members are to be commended. 20 years ago a power engineer died of the most serious form of brain tumour but when his widow asked his union (now amalgamated with Prospect) if they recorded the causes of death amongst their members, they said that they did not. With hindsight she wishes she had taken this apparent negligence further, to help others in the profession.

 

 

 

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Firefighters: government is once again hiding behind the ‘no causal link’ defence:

Ground-breaking research has revealed the serious health risks to UK firefighters following exposure to toxic fire effluents, the chemicals emitted during a fire, in an independent University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) report commissioned by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).

The work is a UK first and the latest in a growing body of international evidence suggesting an increased risk of firefighters developing cancer and other diseases. Fires produce a cocktail of toxic, irritant and carcinogenic chemicals in the form of aerosols, dusts, fibres, smoke and fumes or gases and vapours.

It includes a summary of UCLan’s testing on-site at 18 fire stations as well as over 10,000 responses to a national firefighter survey run jointly between the FBU and UCLan.

Indoor air testing at a number of fire stations and training centres highlighted that UK firefighters are still being exposed to the high levels of toxic contaminants during and after a fire, as cancer-causing chemicals remain on PPE clothing, equipment, and elsewhere at the fire ground. Test samples revealed carcinogens inside firefighters’ helmets, on PPE, and even on breathing apparatus mask filters.

More than 10,000 currently-serving firefighters were surveyed in order to better understand UK decontamination practices and the prevalence of illness, revealing:

• 1% of survey respondents had already been diagnosed with cancer, compared with less than 1% of the general population.
• Of those diagnosed, 26% have skin cancer, the most common, followed by testicular cancer (10%), head and neck cancer (4%) and Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (3%).
• Half of the survey respondents don’t think their fire service takes decontamination practices, including cleaning PPE and equipment, seriously.
• 1 in 5 of the survey respondents store their fire gloves in their boots, 1 in 5 store in their pockets, and 1 in 10 store in their helmet, risking the transfer of toxic contaminants directly to skin.
• Nearly half of the survey respondents felt there was a “badge of honour” attitude in the service, particularly when emerging from fires with contaminants on their PPE or face as a sign of hard work.

Scientists have created a best practice guide for fire and rescue services, putting forward a number of urgent recommendations to minimise firefighters’ exposure to toxic fire effluents. They include:

• Every fire and rescue service must implement fully risk-assessed decontamination procedures en-route to, during and after fire incidents, and ensure all relevant staff are trained in implementing these procedures.
• Fire and rescue personnel should receive regular and up-to-date training on the harmful health effects of exposure to toxic fire effluents, and how these exposures can be reduced, minimised or eliminated.
• Firefighters should wear respiratory protective equipment at all times while firefighting, including after a fire has been extinguished, but is still ‘gassing off’.
• PPE should be clean and should be thoroughly decontaminated after every incident to avoid a build-up of toxic contaminants.
• Firefighters should shower within an hour of returning from incidents.
• Regular health screening to detect early changes that could lead to cancers and other illnesses related to their work.
• Recording attendance at fire incidents over the course of a firefighter’s career is strongly advised and will be key to the longer-term monitoring and management of their health.
• HSE and fire services are urged to take measures to keep firefighters safe from cancer and other illnesses

UK law requires firefighters’ personal protective equipment (PPE) to meet only heat-resistance, heat transfer, and water resistance requirements; it is not required to protect wearers from toxic gases and particulates.

This best-practice report is the first stage of ongoing research examining the link between firefighters’ exposure to toxic fire effluents and the risk of cancer and other diseases. Ahead of the report’s publication, the Environmental Audit Committee recommended that the Health and Safety Executive implement its report’s recommendations on improving firefighters’ work environments. In response the government confirmed that it would instruct HSE to monitor the research and to ensure fire and rescue services identify risks to firefighters.

In most states in Canada and the USA legislation recognises certain cancers as occupational diseases amongst firefighters, but in the UK there is not considered to be enough evidence to link occupational exposure to carcinogenic fire effluents and the higher risk of cancers. This means that if a firefighter believes their illness is work-related, they are required to prove it – an almost impossible task.

Comprehensive no-fault compensation insurance systems for medical and automobile injuries operate in other developed countries, including New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and France, and some American states listed here. They lower premium costs by avoiding expensive litigation.

(Ed) In the UK, compensation for medical and industrial injuries can only be sought through litigation, with payouts made through court or out-of-court settlements. No fault compensation is long overdue, not only for firefighters, but for others at risk, such as farm workers, airline pilots and those suffering from medical negligence.

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The report may be downloaded here: Minimising firefighters’ exposure to toxic fire effluents | Fire Brigades Union (fbu.org.uk)

 

 

 

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Are the HSE and the FSA now monitoring food safety as they should?

Richard Bruce writes: ”The problem is that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is not doing what it was designed to do when set up after the BSE crisis. There is much talk of traceability “From Farm to Fork”, but as with most of these slogans it simply isn’t true”.

He continues: “If it were true then the 2013 Horse Meat Scandal would never have occurred – but the meat reached the supermarket shelves – and consumers. Even though drugs that can be used on horses cannot be used in meat animals, officials claimed there was no risk to human health”.

Locally a farmer was fined some £220,000 for no less than 11 breaches of pesticide regulation, many years ago. Those breaches included the use of illegal pesticides, the keeping of false records and of ignoring post-treatment pre-harvest intervals. Richard Bruce points out: “It should be noted that no HSE investigation and no residue testing discovered these problems and the ”systematic abuse of pesticides” only came to light when two former employees, Leonard Oatley and Peter Kingswell, decided to act as whistle-blowers and reported the true records to the supermarkets.

Though the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had attended a meeting of local villagers who claimed to have been harmed by those pesticides it stated on numerous occasions that they had investigated and found nothing wrong. A Birmingham Post article reported:

“Workers had complained of headaches and skin rashes after the harvesting and Mr Nsugbe (Health and Safety Executive) said there was little doubt that the sweetcorn had entered the human food chain.

“Reading from a report by toxicology experts, Mr Nsugbe said the spraying posed an unacceptable risk to growers and pickers. In a worst-case scenario, “undesirable levels of pesticide residues” could have been left on the corn when it went to the supermarkets, he said, but the risk to consumers was not thought to be significant. Though he said serious health effects were not anticipated for consumers, he admitted that the long-term health risks of exposure to organophosphates (OPs) was still not known”.

After an earlier meeting of villagers with the HSE, Richard did a telephone interview with the BBC for the first edition of their Tomorrow’s World Magazine covering the OPs in our food – it was published and can be read here.

He comments that no one mentioned that the Food Standards Agency, the regulatory system, failed to discover those pesticide residues and links to all illnesses, including deaths, were denied. It was noted on another website however that easier targets appear to be treated with comparative severity by the FSA.

A number of people, both employees and others, complained of ill health as a result of the activities of the farm and a question was asked in the House of Lords. Lord Whitty, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions said:

Both before the prosecution and afterwards a number of people, both employees and others, complained of ill health as a result of the activities of the farm.

It is a matter of HSE policy that all allegations of ill health as a result of pesticide exposure are fully investigated. For each investigation a report is submitted to the Pesticide Incident Appraisal Panel (PIAP) for consideration. The Employment Medical Advisory Service (EMAS) plays a key role in this.

In accordance with HSE’s policy, each complaint relating to alleged ill health due to pesticide misuse at Mersley Farm, including those made since the prosecution, has been investigated. The majority of the complaints have been completed and submitted to PIAP. Some more recent complaints are still under investigation.

Richard Bruce reflects: “Forgotten are the sick villagers and those who died following their exposures. One villager and his dog, one worker and reports of one young boy who ate his sweetcorn every day”.

Twenty years after the serious case of breaches of pesticide regulation, is the health of farm workers and the general public now protected by a rigorous testing and investigatory regime?

 

 

 

 

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Chemicals added to grain: what is the long term effect on human health?

A government website says that pesticides or ‘plant protection products’ (PPPs)  include the following:

• herbicides to control weeds before and during growth
• insecticides to protect seeds and plants from damage by insects
• nematicides and molluscicides to control attack on growing plants by worms and slugs
• rodenticides to prevent damage and contamination by small mammals such as mice and rats during growth and storage
• fungicides to prevent mould forming on plants in the field and in store

Richard Bruce – with inside knowledge gained during his time as a farm manager –  – raises the issue of those farmers and grain store operators who add pesticides and fungicides to grain, as advised by government agencies. They know only too well how difficult it is to ensure an even application.

Have matters improved since the last media report – one of many issued 2001-2014?

The media has been very reticent since the startling 2014 report headlined, ‘Over 60% of breads sold in the UK contain pesticide residues’.

Journalist Damian Carrington recorded that government data showed two in every three loaves of bread sold in the UK contain pesticide residues. Tests on hundreds of loaves also showed that 25% contained residues of more than one pesticide.

In a 2019 report we learn that DEFRA, FSA and HSE have now set up  an Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food to oversees a programme that checks food and drink in the UK for traces of pesticide residues. It has no disciplinary brief: when problems are found, it takes action including additional testing to find out more information – and if necessary advises the regulatory authority so that enforcement action can be taken. The committee acts as a check that results are as expected by the regulatory regime when the law on using pesticides or on pesticide residues in food were set

Some commodities are surveyed every year, whilst others are surveyed less frequently, for example once every three years. See the latest report on the pesticide residues monitoring programme – November results.

We are still waiting for more research into the impact on health as experts recommended in the 2014 report.

A Defra spokeswoman said: “There is no human health risk from pesticide residues in bread.

But Richard points out that many of the chemicals used are both cumulative and irreversible and also trigger sensitivities and allergy. The effect on the immune system has long been known and understood – but is now denied. However the Food Standards Agency ignores this very serious problem and sees it as a problem for Defra and not a food safety issue.

Richard Bruce adds, “But of course it is a food safety issue”. He points out that If he added poison to his neighbour’s food he would be arrested.

He concludes: “Protecting the failing regulators and the chemical companies is a priority – protecting public health is not”.

 

 

 

 

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Toxic pesticides: will Hawaiians get a better deal than Brits?

As a 2015 post on a related website said, Self-regulation is not effective: reconsider. From the recent horsemeat scandal, to the frequent withdrawals of harmful medicines and the banking collapse, it can be seen that self-regulation of food, pharmaceutical and banking corporates is not working. Many other sectors are failing – notably accountancy and the trade in illicit armaments. To these sectors we now add the agrochemical industry.

Earlier this month a post was prompted by Richard Bruce who drew attention to a case reported by Reuters in February; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had won a settlement from Syngenta, after dozens of workers at Syngenta Seeds’ former research farm on Kauai, Hawaii were exposed to the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos in 2016 and 2017.

Readers learnt that Hawaii is now considering bills in the state’s House and Senate (above) to ban chlorpyrifos, as well as a proposal to require farmers to notify the public when they use certain pesticides and to create buffer zones around some schools.

Richard commented, (based on personal experience), “Interestingly in the UK there is no requirement to post warnings after spraying crops – and most of us never get warnings before use either!”

This assertion is confirmed by two answers in the online FAQs section of The Health and Safety Executive, part of the DWP responsible for the encouragement, regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare, and for research into occupational risks in Britain:

5. Does the local farmer have to tell me when he is going to spray pesticides?

It is good practice, but except in some circumstances it is not a legal requirement to notify neighbours of an intention to spray pesticides (see section 3.7 of the ‘Code of practice for using plant protection products’ for further information on when members of the public should be informed). It would be difficult for farmers or other pesticide users to notify neighbours of planned pesticide use on all occasions because weather conditions play a significant part in determining when spraying takes place. It is not uncommon for spraying to occur at short notice or at times which seem unusual. Equally, it is not uncommon for spraying to be cancelled or postponed at short notice if the weather changes suddenly.

6. How do I find out what pesticides a local farmer has been spraying?

By law, all professional users must keep records for at least 3 years of all the pesticides applications they undertake. The ‘Code of practice for using plant protection products’ explains how they might record this information. You can ask the farmer about what pesticides they have been using. They will usually just tell you, although they do not currently need to by law (Ed: a scandal!).

The Good Neighbour Initiative

Government ministers asked the National Farmers Union to collaborate with industry partners and interested stakeholders to draw up a ‘good neighbour’ guide to advise and assist farmers and crop sprayers using pesticides where people are living or working nearby.

As a result the NFU published the Best Practice Leaflet (opp) which may be read here.

Explicit sanctions advocated

Years ago, the Academy of Management Journal published  Industry Self-Regulation Without Sanctions: The Chemical Industry’s Responsible Care Program (A.A. King, New York University). The findings of this study highlighted the potential for opportunism to overcome the pressures of powerful self-regulatory institutions; they suggested that effective industry self-regulation is difficult to maintain without explicit sanctions.

This country has a shameful history of denying the reality of the damage to health inflicted by government agencies and wealthy and powerful agro-chemical and pharmaceutical industries. They delay this for as many years as possible before they acknowledge faulty and compensate the victims. Many GPs, for a variety of reasons, conclude that these patients have a psychological condition rather than a physical one – as Richard Bruce says sardonically:

“Of course we in the UK are a different human species and cannot be poisoned – we only imagine the symptoms out of a fear of chemicals!”

Britain’s organic market has had six years of steady growth and is now worth £2.2 billion, growing 6% in 2017. The amount of farmland in conversion to organic rose 22% last year, as farmers responded to the rise in demand for organic produce. 

In time will this trend, reported in a related website, drive out bad practice which is injuring and killing British citizens?

 

 

 

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Much ado about an OP nerve-agent: but hundreds of British farmers were poisoned – compelled by government to use OP dips

Senior ministers have been told that the nerve agent used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal in in Salisbury, on Sunday 4 March 2018 near Porton Down, has been identified by Porton Down experts as the organophosphate Novichock. Porton Down’s research focus has successively been known as Chemical Warfare, Chemical Defence, Chemical & Biological Defence and now Defence Science and Technology. Areas of concern are outlined here. Early British collaboration with American chemical warfare research (aka ‘field studies’) is acknowledged here.

In 2015 the Guardian reported that a cross-party MPs called for an inquiry into the compulsory use of dangerous chemicals called organophosphates (OPs), used to protect livestock from parasites. The Farmers Weekly reported that the Sheep Dip Sufferers Support Group repeated this call in 2016

The problem was first identified by Dr Goran Jamal, a Kurdish-born neurologist working in Glasgow, who later gave evidence of OP-related Gulf War Syndrome. Read Booker’s compelling account in Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth, or extracts from it here.

In his autobiography, BBC Countryfile presenter Adam Henson wrote: “the authorities realized that they were poisoning a lot of farmers”. In Countryfile Magazine (9.6.17) he wrote (snapshot of page, above right)

BBC Countryfile Magazine made the following points below:

• OPs were originally created as a nerve gas and were developed during the Second World War. In 1951 Lord Zuckerman, who would go on to become the government’s chief scientist, warned of the dangers of allowing farmers to use OPs. Zuckerman raised concerns that farmers could absorb the poison through skin or inhalation. Read the legal noticepublished by Minister of Agriculture and Fishery regarding the harmful effects of Ops in 1951. Read a report published by Tim Farron, MP, stating that Government knew about the harmful effects of OPs.
• Zuckerman called for farmers to be given detailed instructions for the use of OPs and for the substance to be labelled as deadly poison, although neither suggestion would be adopted until the 1980s.
• Dipping sheep became compulsory in the late 1970s, and the use of OPs specifically was mandated by the British government until 1992. Read abstract at Small Ruminant Research.
• In 1981 an advice leaflet was produced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) that warned against the dangers of using OPs, citing that the chemicals could be absorbed through the skin. A report from the HSE in 1990showed growing concerns over the use of the chemicals.
• UCL’s Dr Sarah MacKenzie Ross reviewed existing scientific evidence in 2013 and found that 13 out of 16 studies showed evidence of neurological problems following long-term, low-level exposure to Ops. Long-term health issues linked to OP poisoning also include multiple sclerosis and memory issues.  (Ed; we add her work in Neurotoxicology and Teratology, Volume 32, Issue 4, 2010, abstract here.)
• In April 2014 MPs called for a ‘Hillsborough-style’ inquiry into the sheep-dip poisoning, with Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham called it a “major scandal”. Source: Agri Wales.

A saga of missing medical records

In the Telegraph, Booker pointed out that the health of thousands of farmers and their families had been destroyed by using highly toxic organo-phosphate (OP) chemicals to dip their sheep, as a protection against parasites. When the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) commissioned its own internal study into this disaster, its findings in 1991 were so devastating that they had to be ruthlessly suppressed. The survey, later released under a freedom of information request, said:

“Repeated absorption of small doses [can] have a cumulative effect and can result in progressive inhibition of nervous system cholinesterase.”

The Manchester Evening News published an early photograph of Littleborough farmer, the late Brenda Sutcliff with her husband Harold. She and three family members became ill after using a government-recommended sheep dip.  No active, healthy old age for her – but her persistent campaigning was recognised and celebrated by many (below left).

Details of a sheep dipping survey were released by the Health and Safety Executive following a Freedom of Information Request by the Sheep Dip Sufferers Group. The HSE survey examined sheep dipping facilities and practices on a representative sample of 696 farmers across 16 different regions of Britain. See also: Minister pledges to re-examine OP sheep dip files

But in the same month as this report was published internally – May 1991 – the farming minister at the time, John Gummer, was demanding that local authorities clamp down on farmers who refused to use the chemical.

The report found 160 occasions where some form of ill-health occurred after dipping. It also criticised manufacturers for providing inadequate protective clothing and unclear instructions to farmers on how to use the chemicals: “If with all the resources available to them, a major chemical company proves unable to select appropriate protective equipment, what hope is there for an end-user?” Booker commented that ministers were only too aware that the government had forced the farmers to use these chemicals, which its own Veterinary Medicines Directorate had licensed as safe to use and ends:

“Although in 1992, the government quietly dropped the compulsory use of OPs for dipping, without explanation, a succession of Tory and Labour ministers refused to accept publicly that repeated exposure to them could cause irreparable damage – because, it seemed, any public admission that they were as dangerous as the HSE had found them to be might trigger off a major scandal resulting in tens of millions of pounds of compensation claims”.

A more high-profile victim (see illness), former sheep farmer Margaret Mar (right), a life peer in the House of Lords, has spent three decades campaigning in Westminster on the issue.

She said: “I know from private discussions with an advisor at the Department of Health that officials knew about the risks, but couldn’t publicly criticise OPs because they were a government-recommended dip at that time”.

An campaign by the Sheep Dip Sufferers’ Support Group, co-ordinated by Tom Rigby, organic dairy farmer and chair of NFU’s Organic Forum, has an exceptionally accurate and informative website, with a balanced approach, useful links and well-documented interviews and reports with the political establishment – recording reasonable interaction with MPs like Andy Burnham, George Eustice and Paul Tyler.

They deserve the last word:

“We are a group of volunteers campaigning for better diagnosis and treatment for all those affected by organophosphates used in agriculture. We have no membership subscription or outside funding and rely mostly on the collective experience of those who have been bravely battling against the devastating effects of these chemicals for decades.

“We hope 2018 will be the year when the farming community comes to realise the impact these insecticides have had on those involved in disease control and that they finally start to get the help and support they urgently need”.

 

 

Republished from Political Concern

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Sheep dip sufferers support group update

Following the 2015 post on this website, comes news from Warrington farmer Tom Rigby, co-ordinator of the Sheep Dip Sufferers’ Group, who sent a press release reporting that HSE had released details of their 1992 Sheep Dipping Survey which may be seen on their website – the report here and appendix here.

Readers new to this subject may first wish to read the full history on the group’s website.

HSE identified 700 farmers in 16 different regions of GB (385 in England, 155 in Scotland and 160 in Wales) broadly typical of the whole and 696 surveys were completed. There were 160 occasions described where some form of ill-health occurred after dipping, only three of which had been reported to MAFF/VMD. If this was representative of UK’s 90,400 sheep flocks it suggests over 20,000 cases nationwide.

HSE’S Epidemiology and Medical Statistics Unit suggested a better way of expressing these findings were as “a crude incident rate of 8.9 self-reported illness episodes per 1000 dippers per annum”. This suggests a total of over 33,000 for MAFF’s compulsory dipping years 1976-92. Mr Rigby comments that trying to calculate incident rate this way almost certainly gives an under-estimate due to what is known as the ‘healthy worker’ effect as it ignores fatalities and those too ill to continue working (similar to trying to estimate road traffic incidents over 10 years just by interviewing current drivers).

Cumulative exposure

His testimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkQQl68ltYk

Tom Rigby says: “Whatever the precise figure it does seem by 1992 HSE were aware of the devastating effects dipping was having on the health of sheep farmers. We believe this is the reason MAFF ended compulsory dipping in June that year (something they have always denied) and we request disclosure of correspondence between HSE and MAFF in the weeks prior to that decision being taken”.

The initial results of this HSE study were published as a news release dated 20th July 1993 with the title “HSE SURVEY CONFIRMS POOR WORKING PRACTICES DURING SHEEP DIPPING”. It highlighted “dippers hands or feet were used to immerse sheep on 48 farms” (7% of the total) and the head of HSE’s Livestock National Interest Group, (the sponsors of the report) said “this survey has confirmed our view of where the problems lie”.

However now we have sight of the survey in full there seems to be no correlation between dipping practice and reports of ill-health. 662 farmers, including those using hands and feet, account for proportionately fewer cases than 17 contract dippers who were exclusively using dipping aids.

It said, “Although contract dippers made up only 2.4% of the total they accounted for 10.6% of incidents”. This suggests the greatest single factor seems to be cumulative exposure. Many farmers were not aware of danger of cumulative exposure through inhalation until alerted by this piece in the Farmers Weekly fifteen years later. It is now accepted by HSE but not by DEFRA.

As the contract dippers were also found to be wearing better protective clothing than farmers the main route of exposure might have been inhalation, but face masks were not issued. The shortcoming of protective clothing available at the time is discussed on this audio clip from Countryfile from 1992.

There was no attempt in the survey to try to correlate ill-health with different chemicals used when dipping, apart from the observation that some farmers noticed less problems using non-OP dips. One main conclusion of the report was “Farmers need to be encouraged to substitute a hazardous product (OPs) with a less hazardous product (non OP)”. Sadly however for the last 23 years the ill-health of farmers affected has been ignored; all non-OP have been taken off the market leaving OPs as the only products available for dipping.

We include snapshots from the Northern Farmer’s March edition, which mentioned the work of the group in its front page story, the main feature inside and an editorial (above, centre) calling for an inquiry, listing three questions (above left) to which the group wants answers.

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At last: some open official recognition of the damage to health done by organophosphates

An inquiry into the death of Richard Westgate, a British Airways pilot, by Stanhope Payne, senior coroner for Dorset, officially recognises the damage done by organophosphate (OP) compounds in aircraft cabins. Five years ago government’s failure to admit this danger and change procedures was highlighted in Political Concern: Bad decisions by government – 11c: permitting toxic chemicals in the home, in aeroplanes, in agriculture and in warfare.

Former pilot John Hoyte, Chairman of the Aerotoxic Association, who experienced the devastating effects of Aerotoxic Syndrome, writes ”We believe it is the air travel dimension of OPs that is keeping it from being admitted – millions of people being daily exposed and getting ‘jetlag’.”

Many sheep farmers have suffered serious physical and mental health problems linked to exposure to OP- based sheep dips, which for many years they were legally compelled to use.

Action is long overdue, as may be seen in eight articles on the Chemical Concern website. There is a pressing need for greater awareness and recognition of their condition by government and doctors. See Paul Wright’s case:(link no longer working 15.4.16) but see FWI account of this case and of the missing document mentioned at the end of this article.

In 2015, the Farmers Guardian headlined the sheep dip sufferers’ continuing fight for justice. With OPs used in sheep dip from the 1970s onwards, campaigners claimed there were potentially thousands of farmers affected by OP poisoning. Sheep dipping was required by law and farmers explained there were few or, in some cases, no health and safety guidelines accompanying the chemicals.

It reported the launch of the Sheep Dip Sufferers Support Group aimed at raising awareness of the issue.

The meeting was attended by Brenda Sutcliffe, Littleborough, Rochdale, who has campaigned tirelessly for justice regarding OPs and has long claimed the chemical contributed to the death of her husband, Harold.

Most of those involved in the group had to give up farming due to illness as a result of OP poisoning. The scandal, branded ‘one of the biggest medical cover ups in history’ by members of the newly-formed, has been brought to the attention of MPs, including Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham who advised those campaigning for justice regarding organophosphate poisoning to form a single group in order to have a stronger, unified voice.

Warrington dairy farmer Tom Rigby, who is not an OP sufferer but has had a pivotal role in the formation of the group, said: “The group is for awareness. Officially the problem does not exist so we want people to see it does exist. There is a reluctance to diagnose.” Mr Rigby, who was at the initial Sheep Dip Sufferers Support Group event in Gisburn, Lancashire, last week, said awareness and help for people suffering with a disability was standard in today’s society but there was little awareness of people sensitive to OPs.

Watch video online here

On the Political Concern website: the incriminating sheep dip poisoning HSE report – officially destroyed – has now been revealed.

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